Sunday, September 2, 2012

Senior Coffee, Please!

Today I am fifty-five. I now qualify for the senior coffee at McDonald's with a free refill, too! That's almost like an endless cup of coffee. Before the day is over, I plan to stop by there just to order my coffee!

It feels I have gotten here way too soon. The first couple of decades seemed to drag along. Each Christmas couldn't come fast enough. Then I got married and a couple of years later, the babies started coming.

The pace of time sped up. It reminds me of a ride on a roller coaster. Those first 50 feet or so just crawl along. Then the roller coaster takes it's first plunge and after that it only seems to go faster and faster. I am on that roller coaster.

At this point, I think many people begin to feel panicked. Statistically, looking at fifty-five you realize there is no way you are going to live to be 110. Your life is more than half over. Then the frightening thought begins.. . "I haven't done most of the things I wanted to do yet!" It reminds me of the opening of an old soap-opera: "Like sands through the hourglass so are the Days of our Lives."

This is what causes panic to set in, as if the sands in our hourglass are running out and before you know it there will be no more sand! We all remember the Wicked Witch of the West pointing to her hideous hourglass and telling little Dorothy. "This is how long you have left to live!"

But if we are Christians, if we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, our "hourglass" contains more sand than all the sands of all the shores and oceans. Our hourglass is never-ending, sort of like that endless cup of coffee of McDonald's.

Yes, these bodies that house our spirits might one day die, if the Lord tarries. But our spirits, which is who and what we really are, will live forever. We will know no end. One day we will simply breathe out the air of this earth and breathe in the sweet fragrance of our Lord. And "so shall we ever be with the Lord."

So when the hands of time seem to be rushing by too fast, let us remember that it is "early in eternity," and we have a long and glorious and never-ending life ahead.